


Close Your Eyes:  A For Now Coda

by seperis



Series: For Now [5]
Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-02-02
Updated: 2001-02-02
Packaged: 2017-10-10 08:40:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/97770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seperis/pseuds/seperis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Letting go doesn't mean giving up. Rogue explores a rainstorm and an identity. Things get wet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Close Your Eyes:  A For Now Coda

**Author's Note:**

> Sare, for the ultra-fast beta read and clarification of Central Park. Jennifer Hallmark and Kristin Hughes for the betas of the early version. Ann for running over it and telling me it worked. Diebin for reading it last night and saying it didn't suck.

I'll bet you've never seen Central Park in the rain.

There's something mystical about it--yeah, yeah, yeah, touristy crap from a resident. I've been here a lot--there've been school picnics and parties and I walked here with Bobby once upon a time, under sunlight filtered through thick green leaves high above my head, booted and gloved and scarved among people in lycra and spandex. He held my leather-covered hand and joked about the weather and I watched bicyclers pass by with Logan's tags around my neck, under my shirt so no one could see.

I've always been partial to fantasy. When you're young, that's what life is, you know--a series of fantasies that upgrade to achievable dreams or become a nostalgic reminder of who and what you were. When some girls in the dorms two doors away from me looked forward to their first kiss, I was curled in bed holding a pillow and staring at my own hand, trying to remember what human skin felt like when you touched it.

I forgot.

Maybe I can't be blamed for my fantasies, really--I have so much to work with. Two men and a boy who between them have done it all, seen it all--I have seen so much more than most people ever will. Jubilee complains she's bored--I can relive a musical in seventies Broadway or explore revolutionary eastern Asia, dance in post-World War II France or make love in the heat of a Memphis summer under a bare yellow bulb. I can have memories of a thousand kinds of touch I've never had, never can have.

I am loved and protected and cherished and trained--by people who have no tie to me in blood but only in a simple genetic abnormality that binds us in a way that blood family can never completely understand. I will never lack a home, food, comfort, support--I will never lack companionship and friendship and meaning in life.

I am petted and smiled at and wrapped in the finest silk on the market, an eternal child. Sex doesn't make you an adult, no--life does. And with everything they give me, everything they're willing to give up for me, every way they love me, that's the one thing they can't do--they can't give me a life of my very own, because who and what I precludes that forever.

Forever's an awful long time, Logan told me once, when we sat on the grass sipping spiked lemonade. Stretches in front and behind you in an unbroken stream of time. I break up my forever in fantasies where I'm a model, an actress, a dancer--ah, bet you didn't know I took classes when I was a kid, huh? One thing is always the same--there's always touch. Skin against skin. Brushes of fingers, touches that mean nothing and mean everything.

I walk under the heavy, wet branches of trees stretched above my head like great arms that don't quite hold enough rain back to keep me dry. There's a clearing fifteen meters ahead and everything hits me at once when I step out of the trees--a heavy downpour that washes over the cloak of a seventeen year old girl, that coats the body of a twenty-one year old woman, and I push the hood back and stare up, rain soaking my face and collar, dripping deeply into my shirt. The rain pounds down so hard I can't see the trees at the end of the clearing, blurred into moving greenish white.

I close my eyes.

I have a choice to make.

* * *

Seven days ago I found out everything.

Hell of a post-birthday present.

I curled up in my bed with a hangover from hell and Jubes and Kitty nowhere in sight, thinking how nice it'd be if I'd just sink into the bed and never come out.

Maybe I made a mistake and he didn't say what he really didn't say. Maybe the whiskey reinterpreted everything. Maybe I'm so very wrong that it was just pathetic.

But it's a small jump that I could handle.

I went to his room while he was out--doing whatever it is cage-fighters do for recreation on weekends when they aren't beating the shit out of someone--and started my search. If you asked what I was looking for, I had no clue. For proof either way. Something tangible that didn't scare me.

But this was Logan. I was scared to death.

I checked the closet first. Logical. He's not much for leaving his private effects out where anyone can see them.

My letters to him, all bound up and carefully stored in a leather case that smells faintly of cigar. The watch I gave him for Christmas when I was eighteen, almost immaculate, never used, but never left behind, still in its original case. A bundle of letters from Jean and Ororo and Xavier in the back of the closet. A picture of me in my graduation gown, mortarboard askew, grinning at the camera. Looking close, I noticed that I'm not wearing gloves. They're tucked in my pocket under the gown.

A box that I couldn't open at first--I pulled out a bobby-pin and initiate a lockpicking expedition, one of those random memories that I really couldn't attribute to any one person. Did Eric ever pick locks? Nah, magnetized them. Logan can put adamantium through them. That left Cody. Hmmm. I should check on the crime rate for burglary in Meridian one day. They may have a FBI most wanted right there in my sleepy little former town.

The first thing I saw was a pair of my gloves. I traced them with my fingers, faintly remembering wearing them a long time ago--my hand's grown a little. I checked the fit, wondering why he had them, where he'd gotten them--they're worn, at least two years old, and I could remember losing a pair--

\--oh fuck, he found them in here. That's where they went.

There are other things, things that made me frown. Pictures of me--how he got them I still don't know. My eighteenth birthday party, that he missed by two days, but took me to a play in New York to make up for it and afterwards we ate ice-cream in Central Park at midnight--the ticket, not in so great condition, is tucked in beside it. My first dance, scared to death in a dark green dress with black gloves, Bobby's arm hovering over, but not quite touching, my waist. A few random shots of me that I know Jubes took with her eternally present camera.

There was also an old phone card, dated from around the time he called for Christmas when I was eighteen and we talked for fifty minutes. Things that didn't mean anything and yet meant more than everything else, things he'd kept when he really didn't keep much, what went with him wherever he went.

Always touching and never touched. That's my life, my mission, and my definition of what I am.

"Found it, huh?"

I didn't spin around on the floor, didn't begin to panic because I was just too stunned, didn't say anything but simply looked up, seeing him lean against the door of his closet, a little surprised, a little resigned, very Logan. Stared back down at the box, felt him walk over and crouch behind me, one hand dipping briefly inside, moving things around, tracing the lines of old pictures and frozen memories. He was warm against my back and I closed my eyes to take it in, knowing the staccato pulse of my heart wasn't all arousal, that some of it was fear. And my hand in its too-small glove clenched in my lap

"I don't understand," I finally whispered. Though maybe the part of me that I don't think about did, the part that meshes with his memories. "I mean, do you need an engraved invitation or something? I haven't been obvious enough, or blatant enough, or were you waiting for me to strip naked and sit on your bed in some cheap centerfold pose to wait for you? Would that have gotten the point across better?"

"If you had, at least I'd know you weren't scared of being touched."

I stiffened a little, but he didn't pull back, content to sit there and wait for me to work it out for myself.

"It's not that simple," I stammered out finally.

"It is that simple. You want it to be some issue that can't be fixed without divine intervention or some crap like that. And for awhile there, you didn't think like that--you didn't make it the center of your universe and the axis on which everything had to turn." Fingers reached out, picking up the other glove idly. "And I find these in my room--granted, it was a nice thought if you did it deliberately, but four hours later I knew you hadn't. You slept with them on, when you were alone, in here. When you couldn't touch anything or hurt anyone." He dropped it back in and I closed my eyes again and tried to pretend that he hadn't caught me and I was still alone.

I'm good at fantasy.

"So I try to find out what the fuck happened that made you so scared and no one knew for sure, though the first indicator was around the time you and your little boyfriend parted ways. And at first, I thought he'd done somethin' to scare you or hurt you--" I shivered at the sound of his voice. "And your buddy Jubilation caught me stalking the poor kid outside and dragged me back in and asked for an explanation."

I could imagine Jubilee doing just that. Jubes isn't afraid of anyone or anything.

"She told me that nothing had happened." A pause. "And that was the whole problem."

My fingers shook and I tried to clench them to stop it. His hand covered mine, lightly, tracing my bare skin, soft leather and the smell of the road.

"Nothing happened, did it?"

I wished I could just disappear into the wall, like Kitty. Shapeshift into something that can get by him, like Mystique, but I'm just Marie, sitting on the floor. Pretty much the definition of trapped.

"No."

"And I considered that it was other people you couldn't trust--and I tried to make you see that you could. It took me awhile to work it out--it wasn't that you didn't trust anyone else, you go to a fucking school for mutants, so they know the score, right? It was you. And I could deal with you being afraid of other people--but how the hell do I get into your head to figure out how to fix you being afraid of yourself?

Another pause, and his arm withdrew.

"I'm not a kid anymore. I don't need you to fix me."

And maybe he sighed, I didn't know. A breath against my hair that I leaned into without meaning to at all.

"You're so young, Marie. And I forgot that."

And I stared at my hands and didn't move, and he quietly left me there to consider what he'd said.

I am young. God, though--not like he thinks, like he believes. I'm twenty-one and a hundred--I remember Auschwitz and starvation and rape on cold dirt behind high fences. I remember murder and blood and cages and the filth that ten showers won't wash off your skin or out of your mind. I've had sex in a thousand places with more people than I can count, women and men, and there's little I don't know, less I can't imagine. I'm Rogue, a murderer, a survivor, a monster wrapped in white skin.

Youth is relative. In some ways, I'm too old for him.

* * *

I'll bet you've never stood still in the rain.

The grass is muddy underfoot and my boots start sinking into it a little when I turn in a slow circle as the thunder breaks overhead, echoing through my body--touch I can have. I close my eyes when the rain stings into my skin and unfasten the throat of my cloak, letting it fall like so much shed skin, and I'm soaked within seconds as rain pounds into my long-sleeved blouse and jeans. People on the little paths pass by under the cover of umbrellas and give me a quick stare before continuing on their merry way--this is New York, if I was naked most wouldn't even blink at the sight of me.

With one hand, I push my wet hair back, kicking my cloak to the side, breathing in air thickened with humidity and the smells of the forest--once upon a time I learned to track in the woods and Logan was my adversary for a game of cat and mouse that ended five feet from the edge of the lake we went swimming in during the summers. I don't remember how long it took--everything was instinct and training and reflex, but I remember the smell of fear and adrenaline and rich satisfaction over the scent of pine and mahogany.

Winning was secondary to the life I could feel in the pulse of my body when I ran, and I understood why Logan never stood still, even at rest. Why his life was a fast-forward with a series of measured brief pauses.

I take a step forward and remove my scarf, letting it float to the ground, heavy with water.

I have dozens of scarves--every color, every type, thick enough to ward off the chill of winter, thin enough to barely tint my skin when I wrap one around my neck. I left home with a cotton one filched from my mother's drawer at three in the morning, and bought the one Logan found me in at a discount store just outside Niagara Falls. My hands shook the entire time and oddly enough, that is the last time I remember going into a store unaccompanied and suffered the difficulty of counting money with fingers that couldn't feel the metal and paper they held.

Of course, I've gotten used to that.

Funny--I barely had enough money to buy food, but I bought that scarf because I lost the cotton one in the truck of the fifth person to give me a lift. Once upon a time, I left my room without my scarf and gloves and everyone looked at me as if I was naked, and it was an odd experience, the first one of its kind. I remember how my hands twitched on the desk and I wondered what kind of emergency would require someone to touch my neck ungloved. The classroom smelled a little of fear and a lot of resentment and I cut math to go back upstairs and pull out thick green cotton and didn't talk to anyone for the rest of the day. When Bobby met me for dinner, he smiled in relief and touched my gloved hand and I told him we needed to talk.

Even mutants need a lower class to pity. Society is society through and through. Nothing changes but the names, sugar, you better believe it. And I don't take pity well.

So I step on the scarf.

* * *

Logan left five nights ago.

I sat on his bed while he packed, knees drawn up to my chest. He sorted efficiently through the clothes, finding exactly what he needed with minimum fuss--Logan's ultra-organized, the military in him shows through more than he thinks. Threw them on the bed and I stared at them and wondered if I could wait until he was gone before I fell apart.

"I don't want you to go."

He gave me a glance, a trace of a smile curving his mouth. I guess it isn't very manly to show how excited you are about going out to maim a Bad Guy.

"It's just a mission," he told me. "Won't take long. I'll be back."

Just a mission, he said, as if it was nothing, but it wasn't _*just*_ a mission or anyone could take it. This mission required someone able to survive anything short of nuclear detonation in his fucking face, so to speak, and I didn't need to be told that.

"I don't want you to go," I repeated. I knew if I said anything else, I'd break down and cry and that's not the way he needed to see me when he left--and that's not the person I want to be. He's an X-Man and I accepted a long time ago that the chances of any of us in the Mansion surviving our fortieth birthday relatively intact is a pipe-dream at best.

He's Logan and he loves his work. It's never just business; it's always pleasure.

In the abstract, I knew that, even understood it. In the abstract, in fact, I knew that he'd probably be perfectly fine and worrying about him was something like worrying that the ocean will dry up overnight.

Concrete was different. This was Logan. And this mission was dangerous--damned dangerous--or he wouldn't be going.

He shook his head and ducked into the closet and I grabbed the duffle bag and started putting things in--I know how to pack. Extra shirts, a sweater, jeans, lots of socks, underwear, even a shaving kit--that's enough to make me smile a little. I pulled off my gloves as he came back out, glancing at my painstaking work, and he grinned.

"You worry too much, darlin'."

"Yeah," I answered, trying to keep my voice level. "I guess if you can survive me, you can survive anything." And I stared at the bag, hard, because there's no earthly reason I should be so afraid.

But I am. Every time.

He dropped on the bed beside me, putting the last few things in and zipping it up. Then dropped it on the floor and took my hands from my lap. The leather was cool against my skin and I forced myself not to stiffen.

"I'll be fine."

I don't think before me, he ever had anyone who cared whether he came back. And I wondered if that's something he liked

It was pure impulse that moved me, so I crawled into his lap and feel his arms go around me, bare hands around his back, closing my eyes, breathing in his scent, and trying hard not to cry now. I can't let go, and maybe he can't either. I want to believe that, and I can feel his chin in my hair when he strokes my back with leather-coated hands.

"You're pretty when you cry, darlin'." He was teasing me.

"I'm not crying." My voice sounded a little hollow and a lot congested. How annoying. I cleared my throat hastily.

"Sure you're not." Another long stroke, and he tilted my head up with both gloved hands, smiling down at me. "Don't worry. I'll be back in one piece. Maybe carve you a new pair of gloves out of the son of a bitch causing problems this time. You like Sabretooth's hide?"

That was enough to make me giggle, which was what he was going for in the first place, and he dropped me neatly back on the bed and picked up the bag. I didn't move and as he walked to the door, he gave me one glance and a wicked smile.

"I stocked up on cigars, baby. Feel free."

The door closed and I stared at the drawer a little startled. And because I couldn't help it, I walked over and opened it, looking at the expensive Cubans in neat rows.

I think that's when I started crying. I'm not sure.

* * *

I'll bet you never laughed at the rain.

It's cold, which is a shock to my thinly-clad body, as I shed the light blouse--my soaked t-shirt clings to my skin, and goosebumps jump up all over me at the feel of rain on bare arms. Once upon a time, I went swimming alone in the lake near the mansion, under pure moonlight, wearing a tank top and bodysuit (for the sake of the poor fish, who knew if I could absorb through scales)--the water was cold and I got out shivering, wrapping myself in my towel, and Jean caught me at the door and made me go to the infirmary, asking what I thought I was doing swimming at night in October.

I showed her my silk-covered hands and said that it was too hot to swim in gloves in summer.

God, it feels good, bare skin I've never seen outside the shower, rarely touched by the sun. Air whispering against ever inch exposed, and one last thing, one last fantasy, and I lift my hands encased in black leather.

Carefully, I strip off my gloves, letting them fall on the ground beside me. Step on them for good measure, and rain washes away lint and sweat and fear from my fingers--and joggers run by looking a little confused when I raise a bare hand and wave at them.

"Marie."

I knew he'd find me and I start laughing, wet hair falling in my face, and I scrape it back with a bare hand. God, how weird is that, the whole idea of being surrounded by trees and jogging people and the rain comin' down on me and I don't give a damn.

"What the fuck are you doing out here?" He's keeping to the grass under the leafy

canopy of the trees, relatively protected.

"When'd you get back? How'd you find me?" It's a giggle I can't control, any more than the rain that falls down on us, any more than the feel of the thunder that rumbles the ground under my feet. And he looks at me standing in a soaked t-shirt and jeans, excess clothing spread around my feet in a little circle that I step out of.

"Got back an hour ago and followed the route of your car, baby." And he stops fifteen feet away, giving me that particular look that means he's questioning my sanity and that makes me laugh more. "I could find you anywhere."

And he just watches me in something resembling complete bafflement when I kicked off one boot, then another, letting the mud soak up into my socks, against my bare feet. Squish my toes in, then set my heel on the toe of one sock, jerking it off.

Logan leans against a tree and looks vaguely amused. "I'm assuming here--it's a stretch, darlin'--that you left that obvious a trail for a reason. You wanna share why we're in Central Park in the middle of a damned storm?"

"Not really." Other sock off and I jump, coming down to splash in the puddle that's rapidly accumulating around me, muddy water sloshing across my denim-covered calves. Then look at him, trying to look macho while water pools around his boots. He can do it too. How I don't know, but he can. "Lose some clothes there, sugar. Wet leather ain't that much fun--I just discovered that with wet wool." I poke my cloak with one bare toe, then throw him a smile. "Do it, Logan."

He thinks I've lost my mind. I want to tell him I found it.

* * *

Jean and I chatted three days ago

__

You're so young, Marie.

"Did you tell him I'm too young?"

It really stuck in my mind--the one thing that, ironically, I hadn't expected, not anymore Of all the impediments, in mind and in reality, at twenty-one, I thought I'd gotten beyond that one problem. At seventeen, at eighteen, at nineteen, at twenty, it meant something. At twenty-one, it doesn't mean diddly. Or maybe I never expected it from him, that he'd let something like age stand in his way---he'd screwed his way across every continent known to man and my memories don't include him askin' around for ID either.

She didn't look surprised by my question, and faintly, I remembered seeing Logan standing in her office, walking out and slamming the door shut behind him. Ducking behind a plant so he wouldn't see me, waiting until he'd left the hall before staring at the door.

Five days before. Couldn't be the same thing.

Something in me began to pulse, hard, looking into her eyes, seeing the truth mirrored there that I needed her to confirm. Part of it was guilt, written in clear green--but most of it was certainty. Hell, she may have even thought she understood. Everyone thinks they know what's best for me, the eternal child, to be petted and wrapped in silk and loved. My vote doesn't count.

"He didn't need to be told. Sit down, Marie."

I grabbed the back of the chair, staring down at her.

"I haven't been young since you met me, Jean. You can pan that crap off on anyone else--what the fuck did you say to him?"

I wanted to blame her. I wanted to blame the school, Jubilee, the X-Men, Scott, God. I didn't want to blame myself. That would mean I could have done something right along the way and that would mean that I actually did do something wrong.

And she studied me--Jean's all about control and cool composure. You just can't buy her kind of personality in stores, though I would if a good brand-name tried to market it.

"Rogue--"

"He wants me. I want him. What the fuck is so wrong with that?"

Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Maybe when I joined up, in fine print it said I couldn't be an X-Man and have a social life, though I didn't remember seeing that in the contract. Maybe it's just--

"You're not wearing gloves."

And that startled me, so I stared down at my hands, a little surprised, and automatically began to put them behind me. And those cool eyes watched every movement and I locked them on the back of the chair, feeling the wood begin to give under my grip.

"I forgot." I'd left them in my room and suddenly, I was naked, exposed, the ends of my scarf trailing against my chest. And the feel of wood under my fingers was like something new and I found myself taking in the cool grain and smoothness. How foreign it was to have sensation on my bare fingers

"How long has it been since you touched anything without gloves, Rogue?"

I knew she was trying to distract me and that just pissed me off.

"Tell me what you told Logan or I'll rip it out of your fucking mind, Jean!"

And that startled us both--green eyes go wide and dark and I saw her fingers twitch on the desk, auto defensive reflexes waking up to the fact that just because I'm a student doesn't mean I'm not a threat. The back of the chair gave out in my grip and I jerked back, too surprised to speak, dropping the wood on the floor, landing in a clatter that was indecently loud in the quiet room. We stared at each other several seconds, neither of us breathing.

Something in me woke up--Logan was gone, and I was here, and I wasn't wearing my gloves. I was twenty-one and in love with someone I couldn't have--not because he didn't want me, but because I was afraid. Now this, on top of everything else--other people felt the need to fuck with my life more than I already had.

Screw that. The last thing I needed were more obstacles.

"What was that?" she asked softly, and I couldn't be sure if she's talking about my threat, the chair, or my bare hands. I blinked, trying to pull out of the rage that took over so suddenly--and I realized whose rage it was.

I realized how much I meant to say that. And it could scare me, how much I wanted it, how much I needed to lash out at someone, anyone. God knew, just once, I wanted to hurt someone besides myself.

"What did you tell him?" I whispered. "Too young, too inexperienced, too stupid, too naive? Too dangerous, too foolish, too much a kid? Did you offer yourself in my place? Make the sacrifice?"

Her eyes narrowed. She can look dangerous when she wants--suddenly, she wasn't just Jean Grey, she was a telekinetic and a telepath with some mightily destructive power at her disposal under the right circumstances. But no one matched me for sheer fear--I can kill with a touch, take someone's life in a breath, take their abilities in a heartbeat.

"Rogue--"

"You want him that badly?" It was four years of thinking, of watching them, of watching her. I could never hate her. But I could try. All my other choices sucked. "You want him, Jean? Panting after you like a dog, helps your ego, your pride, you like to know you're first and only?" A pause, and she never looked at me like that before, as if seeing me for the first time. Hell, maybe she was. "He's mine. Make this a competition and I guarantee you'll lose."

Her head tilted, green eyes narrowed.

"When you won't touch him?"

"And you will?" Shit, what the hell is wrong with me, this was going places I'd never stepped foot before. "Or did you already and figure out you liked it? *_What the fuck did you tell him, Jean?*_"

She looked down at her desk briefly, and I knew she was talking to the Professor. A slight frown, looking up, and she began to rise.

"Let's discuss this--"

"Answer the question, Jean. What did you tell him?"

She stared at me, a thousand thoughts running clearly across her eyes, in her mind. A thousand reasons and justifications and maybe even a couple of realizations. But not many and not enough.

"The obvious. What you're showing now. What you are, what he already knows and only needed confirmed." She took a step and I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise, a soft growl in my throat. "You're not ready." A pause. "Xavier wants you in his office. Please go, Rogue. Talk to him." And she reached out, fingers brushing my sleeve, being Jean Grey and compassionate even when I'd threatened to suck her mind through her skin, and I bit my lip and turned away, leaving, knowing I could learn to hate her for telling the truth. I turned to the door, throwing it open with all the maturity of a three year old denied a sweet. Most three year olds, however, don't have the dangerous luxury of getting what they want through a simple act of will and a lack of scruples. That should scare me.

I'm okay with that, though. I have lots of reasons to be scared of myself.

* * *

I'll bet you never saw Logan laugh.

It's a brief battle--he's trying not to smile, trying not to look anything but annoyed and harassed by girls wanting to wander around in rainy weather minimally clothed, but he finally sighs and strips his jacket, dropping it on the ground (it's probably seen worse). Gives me a curious look, and he's fighting it, hard as he can.

"There's this great thing called roofs--created to keep out of stuff like this. For a reason."

"Be a man, sugar, take a little water." And I skip the four steps that separate us, my hair getting in my way again, and his gloved hand smoothes it back from my face, brushing my skin. "You're not getting the full effect--get out from under that tree."

"No fucking way."

I get both his hands and start pulling. And while, yeah, he outweighs me by a few hundred pounds, in shock he tends to just go with the flow. The rain hit him straight on and he shakes his head roughly, then frowns.

"What the hell is with you?"

"Life. Rain. Greenery. You ever dance in the rain? You've missed something special, lemme tell you." Though I'd guess the people that passed us must have assumed I was a recent escapee of some conveniently close insane asylum. Still grinning, still feeling that utter freedom of bare arms and bare hands, I pull away, kicking mud over his jeans. He jerks once, pulling me close enough to look in my face, and his hand slips under my shirt, against the bare skin of my waist.

It feels good.

"What are you doin'?"

I stare up, my mouth twitching.

"Being Rogue. You like it?"

It's a long moment, and I feel the smile slip away, and he studies me again, looking for something. A look I've seen for four years, a look I can define now because God, I do understand. I do.

He looks like he found it.

"You're getting filthy." It's a soft voice, almost a rumble of approval.

"What's wrong with gettin' dirty?" I drop, picking up a handful of mud, and smear it across his shirt. He lets go and I dance back, hearing my own laugh again--and damn, when is the last time I laughed like this?

"You threw mud at me." Blank shock that only set me off harder.

"Smeared it." Let's be accurate here, though the look on his face is worth every second I'm gonna suffer when he gets to me. "Whatcha gonna do, sugar?"

And there it is--a slightly predatory grin, narrowed eyes.

"You really wanna know?" He drops into an easy crouch, fingers pressed to the dirt by my cloak

"You'll have to catch me first." I skip backward another step, muddy water splashing across my chilled toes. And he laughs.

"You get fifteen seconds, darlin'." Then the smile fades, replaced by something else entirely, and I know it, I choose it, I want it. "Run."

* * *

Yesterday I talked to the Professor

"Tell me something I want to hear."

I love Xavier. I do. He's the father that mine doesn't wanna be anymore, but better, because he doesn't remember me wearing diapers. Both hands braced on his desk, I had a thousand questions that he couldn't answer and he could feel every one of them echoing through my skull.

He let me come in my own time, and two days of brooding was enough to convince me that it wasn't something I wanted to continue doing for any considerable length of time. I'm good at brooding. I can even growl and look mean. When I realized how good I was at it, I figured the time had come and I'd better get it out before I became a professional and Logan got competition on bad temper.

"Rogue," he finally said softly, and I thumped down in the chair across from him and tried to get my bearings. "Nothing is that simple."

"I've given up on simple. Give me endlessly complex, give me impossible, but give me _*something*_. Anything."

He smiled then, nodding in agreement--or maybe he just picked up my near desperation and remembered that I was wandering around threatening other mutants. Which might mean he needed to intervene.

"I threatened Jean."

If anything, his mouth twitched.

"Told her I'd suck it outta her brain." And I stared at him, waiting for him to give me a standard lecture on behavior.

"It's rather encouraging that you're trying to pursue your own answers, Rogue. I think you've depended on others finding them for you for too long."

Startled, I looked up at him, and then at his neatly folded hands. The world doesn't like mutants--but they certainly lost out when they lost him. His true calling was psychologist, no question.

And he made my little breach of manner sound pretty damned good, and I'm all for having anything I do being celebrated in a positive light.

"Of course, if you had carried through, we would be having a very different conversation. I hope you understand that, Rogue." And he looked stern then, and I nodded my understanding enthusiastically. "However, since it did not descend to that level, I think we can safely dismiss the subject and you can tell me why you're here."

"Jean said you wanted to talk."

An arched eyebrow and I sighed. Dealing with telepaths really does make you cut the crap a lot faster.

"Logan will be back tomorrow, sir." I swallowed, remembering the gloves I'd dropped in his bag--a symbol he'd understand better than words. "And I don't know--" I stopped. I'd known for awhile he was at the point of actively pushing, that the nudging was over. And I really couldn't blame him for that, and when he came back, he'd want answers to everything, the stuff I'd hidden, the stuff I didn't know I'd hidden.

And he'd want to touch me and that scared me as much as it thrilled me.

Xavier nodded agreement with my every mental point--I love telepaths--and then slowly leaned back.

"Tell him no."

I straightened. This was going an odd direction.

"Sir?"

"Tell him no. Tell him you have no interest in pursuing a romantic attachment. Make it very clear, and trust me, Logan will desist in his efforts."

"That's not what I want!" And I admit it, I yelled it, and damn telepaths, they got it all wrong. I was on my feet and the chair overturned, and he still watched me with that curiously cool expression that meant nothing and everything.

"Ah, then, Rogue--what do you want, precisely?" A pause and I brought my temper under strict control--it wasn't like I could throw myself across the desk and choke my father figure to death or anything--besides, I'd guess that he could hold me perfectly still with the strength of his mind alone while I flailed about. After a moment, I took a breath.

"I love him."

"He's a criminal."

Tell me something I _*don't*_ know--all of us are criminals in one or seven states. The only reason I don't have a rap sheet is because Marie wasn't on the street long enough to get caught. Even Jubes has some decent alleged felonies under her belt.

"He won't stay here, Rogue. He will leave eventually."

"He's not too fond of staying in one place. I know that. I don't have issues with it." Probably because I felt it myself sometimes--I can't imagine what it must be like to be him and have that drive all the damned time.

"He's old enough to be your grandfather."

"Have we actually proved that yet?" I knew his mouth twitched. "Don't really care, sir."

I thought he wanted to smile, but that had to be my imagination.

"Then what is the problem?"

I began to sit back down when I remembered the chair was still on its back. Yeah, very smooth. Righting it, I sat down, looking across the desk at the Professor. It wasn't Jean or Jubilee or the Professor or the X-Men who had to do this, just me, and somehow, that didn't scare me as badly. He reached out with one hand, hovering over mine. Eyes wide, I stared back at him, my heart in my mouth, before the slim fingers closed over my covered wrist.

"What is your instinct, Rogue?"

* * *

I'll bet you never won even when you lost.

It's an unequal contest, but that's the story of my life. Winning is subjective in the extreme.

It's grass against my bare feet and I could be at home in Mississippi, running through the wet lawn, though Mamma never let me play outside in the rain. It's darting behind trees, knowing the rain will wash away my scent but not enough for him not to be able to pick it up. It's my hair trying to cling to my face and the back of my neck and it's the sheer power of the moment I choose to live.

It's all about freedom, the one thing he couldn't teach me that I had to learn all on my own.

Far behind me, I can hear him, probably checking my trail, how I doubled-back on myself, dragging every trick he'd ever used from my mind, and trying like hell to stop laughing because it's slowing me down bad. And damn, I'm the hunted, I shouldn't be so damned amused that every time I draw a breath, it comes out in a stuttering laugh that he's gotta be able to hear.

He tackles me outta nowhere and I can't even get the breath to giggle, when he cushions my fall with his body and I stare down at him, hands braced on either side of his shoulders. He's muddy and wet and looking as if he's been through a major natural disaster--mudslide maybe--and he smears dirt on my t-shirt and jaw with a gloved hand when he cups my face.

"I think you won," I tell him, my hair tangled in wet strings falling over us both, and he rolls me on my back, raising himself slightly on his elbows, his weight pressing me deeper into the ground.

"I think so too." A breath against my lips. "Close your eyes."

"I don't trust you. You gonna rub mud in my face?" There's mud in his hair and a smear on one cheek and he frowns, apparently considering the idea. "You wouldn't."

"I might. Take it like a man, baby. Close your eyes."

And I stare up again, meeting unreadable hazel, and then shut them tight, feeling the drops of rain falling on my forehead, fingers relaxed in the dirt beside me. Something soft slides over my face--something light and cold and wet, smelling vaguely of earth and life--then warmth against my lips, soaking through the scarf.

"Trust me."

God, he's kissing me. He got my scarf. My body reacted, wanting to curl away, wanting to stiffen and push him off and scream how badly I could hurt him, I could kill him with a twitch, but I tamped it all down, until my mind was silent and my body still and I accepted it.

Until I feel it in every nerve of my body, a warmth that reached into me, merging fantasy and reality into something better than they could ever have been alone.

"Trust yourself."

It's the smell of dirt around me and rain and grass, and the lightest brush of lips that changes when he twists his fingers in my hair, tilting my head, my lips opening for him, my fingers digging deeply into the dirt that surrounds us, mud sliding up under my nails. When he pulls my scarf down to my throat, I stare up at the rain in wonder, the tingling running through my body with all the power of the lighting overhead, something that's meant to be and never was supposed to happen.

It's touch. It's everything. And he grazes my collar with his teeth, then lifts his head, grinning down at me.

"Say it," I whisper. Because I never let him say it before, not wanting to believe, wanting to keep my fantasy. With mud soaking cold into the back of my shirt and into my jeans, all the reality in the world grounding me into real life, the way I could make it the way I wanted it if I only tried. Gloved fingers turn my face up, shielded from the rain by his head, dripping water onto my ears and shoulders.

"I love you."

Yeah, I know. For so long that I forgot. Yay for me and my overanalysis and my fear. I lock my arms around his back and start laughing and can't stop, even when I feel his forehead pressed to my shoulder, knowing he's smiling as well.

"What changed?" he asks softly and I feel the warmth of his mouth against my shoulder, the brief cut of teeth through the tank top and skin. I draw my nails down his back, over wet cloth and hard muscle, and thunder shakes the ground again, rippling through my body and his.

Staring up at the sky, I shake my head.


End file.
